


Cure for Pain, II

by aderyn



Series: Natural Facts [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221B Ficlet, ASiP, Gen, Post Reichenbach, THoB
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-21
Updated: 2012-03-21
Packaged: 2017-11-02 07:39:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/366563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aderyn/pseuds/aderyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"John can gentle something wild-eyed under his hands and then, if something else wild-eyed comes to interrupt, shoot it right between the eyes."</p>
<p>Phosphorus, Hesperus?</p>
<p>True indigo, not woad.</p>
<p>Sherlock, Post-Reichenbach.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cure for Pain, II

**Author's Note:**

> Part of something longer ["True Indigo( Indigofera tinctoria)"]--but for now, a 221B!

_“For a sensation to be felt as pain is for it to be pain.”—Saul Kripke_

 

John can gentle something wild-eyed under his hands and then, if something _else_ wild-eyed comes to interrupt, shoot it right between the eyes.  Sherlock’s mouth quirks just recalling the bullet hole, the symmetry of that luminous act of violence and its mild-mannered shadow, the hands-behind-the-back of John, bracing his blameless, gunless, hands.  “Just let me...” John said, later, over Chinese, reaching across the table and holding Sherlock’s head steady (briefly, the bookends of his warm palms):”Nope, no shock.“

He doesn’t smile until they both do, and then they nearly choke on the hot-and-sour. And Sherlock feels the bleeding out (that didn’t happen, not to him), and the bleeding in.  _(Vinegar, white pepper, adrenaline, green tea, oxytocin, capsaicin , blue ginger_ ).

***

The window frames a dark blue sky full of deep, bright astronomical objects.  Two stand out--he doesn’t know what they are. ( _Phosphorous, Hesperus? Light-bringer,dawn-bringer, Lucifer; all the same to him; sense and reference; discoverable, or a priori?  That’s Philosophy, not astronomy.)_

The sky is indigo. ( _True indigo,_ ** _Indigofera tinctoria_** _,_ _not woad , **Isatis tinctoria,** , native to the steppes of Central Asia, a substantive dye, not reactive, which will bond molecularly, with a mordant, which is toxic...) _He’s shaking _._

He’s dead.

_(Discoverable or a priori_?):

He could glow blue and fly off.  John wouldn’t walk in and stand by the bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Indigo is a dark blue crystalline powder that sublimes at 390–392 °C. It is insoluble in water, alcohol, or ether but soluble in DMSO, chloroform, nitrobenzene, and concentrated sulfuric acid. The chemical formula of indigo is C16H10N2O2.


End file.
